Episode "Live Together, Die Alone" Season Finale

Episode “ Live Together, Die Alone”
Air date: Wednesday, May 24th, 2006
Season Finale

Note: There were a lot of location changes in this two-hour episode so I’ve decided to use the locations as my re-cap breaks. I hope this helps make it more readable.

Rescued! Or at least that’s what you’d think with a boat looming in on the horizon. Not with our group though, they have other plans!

Episode re-cap

Beach:
Jack, Sawyer and Saiyd swim out to the boat only to find a drunken Desmond. Jack wants to know why he came back. Desmond tells him that after 2 ½ weeks of sailing he simply “was returned” to the island.

Flashback jail:
Desmond is released from military prison and dishonorably discharged from the Royal Scots. His girlfriend’s father is there to meet him and dissuades him from seeing his daughter. Ok, he pays him to run away, calling him a coward.

Beach:
Saiyd and Jack hatch a plan (pun intended) to scout the others using the boat. They are intent on leading a surprise attack. Saiyd needs someone to sail the boat and Desmond is not interested. Saiyd convinces Jin to help him and Sun refuses to stay behind this time.

Hatch:
Locke and Eko begin their struggle together. Locke tells Eko not to be a slave and Eko throws him out of the hatch.

Flashback:
In a coffee shop Libby gives her dead husbands boat to a perfect stranger (Desmond) to win a race around the world. We find out later that his girlfriend’s father sponsored the race. And that he is desperate to win.

Jungle:
The chosen five are going to meet the “Others.” In the jungle, a huge bird flies out and surprises them. Michael shoots at the bird but his gun has no bullets. He begins to see that they know he is leading them into a trap. Hurley is convinced the bird said his name?!?

Beach:
Charlie finds Locke crying and tells him of Desmond return. Desmond tells Claire that the vaccine is useless and that she is wasting her time. Locke finds Desmond and they talk about the Desmond’s three year stint in the Swan hatch. Locke tells Desmond about the orientation tape for the Pearl hatch and wants Desmond to help him stop Eko from entering the numbers into the computer.

Boat:
Meanwhile aboard the “Elizabeth” Sun is sick (and not from the sea) and Jin sees the strangest of sights. In perfect Saiyd manner he says, “I don’t know which is more disquieting, the large foot or that it only has four toes!” What a beautiful line!

Hatch:
Desmond and Locke force a shutdown in the hatch and Eko gets locked out. Now they must wait for the numbers to count down. Meanwhile, Eko convinces Charlie to help him and Charlie tells him about the dynamite.

Flashback hatch:
After a storm at sea Desmond is knocked unconscious. He is found on the beach by a man in a HAZMAT suit and is taken back to the hatch. We find out that this is Kelvin and he explains a great deal about the hatch. We are told that “Radzinsky” is the blast door artist and that he also edited the orientation film. Kelvin is simply maintaining the map.

Jungle:
Kate notices that the group is being followed and they shoot and kill one of the others. Jack forces Michael to tell what he knows and he admits to killing Ana-Lucia and Libby and releasing “Henry Gale.” Jack tells his group that he has a plan.

Hatch:
Eko prepares to try and blow up the blast door in the hatch while Charlie argues with him. In a strange gesture Eko removes Charlie’s belt and throws it against the electromagnet. The ensuing explosion deafens Charlie and injures Eko.

Flashback hatch:
The hatch alarm is counting down and Kelvin is gone. Desmond enters the numbers and learns more about the hatch. Kelvin tells him that there is a system termination key and he explains the entire electromagnetic charge and build-up.

Other’s camp:
On Sayid’s scouting mission he enters the other camp and find it deserted. The hatch they are guarding turns out to be an empty rock cave and he realizes that his friends are walking into a bigger trap then they thought.

Jungle:
Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley and Michael come across the Dharma notebooks in a huge pile. The tube from the Pearl hatch leads nowhere. They hear the strange whispering coming from the jungle again and Sawyer is hit with a poisonous dart. Soon Kate and Jack are also hit with darts.
Flashback hatch/beach:
When Kelvin goes out of the hatch with a torn HAZMAT suit Desmond gets suspicious and follows him. Kelvin has secreted the boat in a hidden cove and has been repairing the boat. Kelvin and Desmond scuffle and Kelvin hits his head on the rocks. To all appearances he is dead. When Desmond returns back to the hatch metal objects are flying through the air towards the magnet.

Pala Ferry:
The “Others” have captured Jack and his group and they are tied up and gagged on the Pala Ferry wharf. Kate indicates that she knows Zeke’s beard is not real and he takes it off understanding that they know. His and Ms. Clue’s true names are revealed but worse yet “Henry Gale” is revealed as their leader.

Flashback:
After Kelvin’s death Desmond is despondent and finding a love letter from Penelope he breaks down. He then hears pounding, talking, etc. at the hatch door and shines his light up to reveal John Locke pounding on the hatch door. This cycle has been completed. The opening of the season was Locke looking down into the hatch with the light shining up.

Hatch:
Locke has let the numbers run out! But Desmond has plans to re-set the system. The electromagnetic disturbance has reached a fevered pitch. Appliances are being pulled toward the magnet, the pressure has crushed the numbers box on the wall and the hatch is vibrating and humming like never before. Locke tells Eko he was wrong and then an incredibly bright violet light and loud thrumming reverberating noise is everywhere and then is gone.

Pala Ferry:
“Henry Gale” gives Walt to Michael and gives him the boat as promised. He even tells him to sail at heading 325 degrees and he’d be rescued. Hurley is released and told to return and tell no one to come back for Jack, Kate or Sawyer. “Henry Gale” tells Hurley that his friends are going home with him.

Snow-covered mountain hatch?:
Iceland perhaps? Two men are seen in a scientific monitoring outpost. An alarm goes off and they check the system. The equipment has detected an electromagnetic anomaly. They pick up the yellow hot-phone to report… and Penelope Widmore answers!



Observations and thoughts on the season finale:

The boat
The “Elizabeth” was out of Newport Beach, California and was named after Libby. The boat belonged to her husband who had died. This tells me that Libby came from money. Perhaps, she even married into the Widmore clan?

Charles Dickens – “Our Mutual Friend”
This book has special meaning for Desmond and may explain a great deal. A recent review states:
“Our Mutual Friend” was the last novel Charles Dickens completed and is his darkest and most complex. The basic plot is vintage Dickens: an inheritance up for grabs, a murder, a rocky romance or two, plenty of skullduggery, and a host of unforgettable secondary characters. Sound like anything we’ve seen lately. It sounds like a review for “Bad Twin.” Hmm… curious!

New Characters
There were a few new characters revealed tonight:
Charles Widmore – Father of Penelope but not one of the Widmore clan from the “Bad Twin” book. Is this another branch of the family?
Penelope Widmore –Desmond’s girlfriend, and someone to watch.
Radzinsky – the original hatch sitter.

Full and Real Names
1. Desmond David Hume
2. Kelvin Joe Inman
3. Zeke aka Mr. Friendly is really named Tom
4. Ms. Klugh is really named Bea

Answers
1.Why push the button? There is an electromagnetic charge that builds up every 108 minutes. Putting the numbers into the computer causes the build up of energy to discharge. When Desmond allowed the numbers to run out when he followed Kelvin he caused a system failure, which actually caused the crashing of Oceanic Flight 815!
2. Kelvin is the same man who turned Saiyd into an agent in Iraq and is also Kate’s father (her picture was on his desk in that earlier episode).
3.We also see the “Pala Ferry” for the first time (not Apollo as I thought from the Pearl orientation film). Why have a ferry here at all? There must be some base close by for a ferry to be present at all. And where does it go to?
4. The others are the whisperers. Just before Jack, Kate and Sawyer are poison darted we hear the strange whispering we’ve heard in the jungle before. This means that the others are the whisperers, but why?
5. From the fact that the Dharma notebooks have piled up and went absolutely nowhere we can assume that the real experiment was taking place in the Pearl hatch and not in the Swan hatch as Locke believes.
6. Is Penelope looking for Desmond? Absolutely! She knows about the Electromagnetic anomalies from her father’s dealings with the Dharma Initiative (he is after all a Widmore). Why would she monitor EMA’s, if she didn’t have an idea what they were? She is definitely looking for Desmond and will probably play a large role in the seasons to come.

More Questions
1. Where are the others taking Jack, Kate and Sawyer?
2. What’s with the large four-toe foot statue? Made of concrete? We know that the Widmore Corp. has experimented with new types of concrete. But why a statue with only four toes?
3. Is Penelope looking for Desmond? Why is she tracking electromagnetic anomalies? (see above)
4. Why was Desmond in military prison?
5. Why does Desmond take up Widmore’s offer and run away?
6. Why did the blast door map have to be invisible? Did they have periodic inspections from the Dharma Initiative?
7. Is Kelvin dead? We see him with a smashed head and a lot of blood but do we know for certain that he is dead? I think they want us to think that he is dead.
8. What happened to Radzinsky? Now that Kelvin is presumably dead will we ever know? He seems to know more about the island and the project than anyone else. He drew the blast door map, edited the orientation film, taught Kelvin how to fake a shut-down and showed him how to restart the system. Seems like he held more answers than anyone we’ve encountered, so far. Hopefully, he’ll appear in the next season (perhaps in flashback?)

And an admission… The Hanso game and the program have turned my head to mush. There is so much to keep straight between the two and so much to keep up with that I know I have missed asking a great many pertinent questions. Please join in with your ideas, thoughts and observations. It was a great deal of fun. Please let me know if you would like to continue to be included in the newsletter for next season.

You can see all my re-cap posts at:
http://thealternativeisland.blogspot.com/